Deception to the End, Good Show – Nikita

Packing a season’s worth of action in the final hour of the final episode of Nikita was a mission accomplished with great skills by cast & crew. How can you go wrong with an opening wherein a baddie is blown up— and your “good guy” hero did it? It’s worth a 2nd watching if run again.

I’ve been following spy/covert ops programs for nearly 50 years. Good and bad. Funny and sad. This conclusion was fast moving, entertaining and riveting. We saw the dark place Nikita came from, her choices along the way, and the force for good that she had become. Then we saw her throw it all out there in a blood-thirsty scourge-the-earth rampage against The Group and towards Amanda.

Perhaps because I’ve been watching espionage series so long I pieced it together 42 minutes into the program (some weak spots in writing were dead give-aways but considering they had to squeeze one full season into 6 episodes, no harm no foul); sent out a veiled tweet for those who wanted to read between the lines and see what was coming. No matter who Nikita wasted along the way, no matter how many bodies she had to step over to get to Amanda, there could be no death.

Something else had to be planned. Nikita had learned from Amanda.

Amanda had to be alive when the curtain came down on the Nikita series. Killing her would not be enough revenge; that would be a short term response. As much as fans might like all loose ends tied up, you can’t have that happen in a genre where loose ends and deceptions are what hold a series together.

And… Amanda had to stay “alive” to possibly escape at some future point. Probably not. But you never know. That could be said of the entire four seasons of this series that wasn’t afraid to shake up the entire premise, from taking on Division, to running it, from working outside the government to working for it. And then there was the last scene, the “happy ending” of Nikita’s retired, but she’s not.

That was priceless insight as to where the journey had taken Nikita, and to where she would take herself next.

As for my choice of ending, here’s what series creator Craig Silverstein told TV Guide in an interview “And then ‘Bubble’ was a working title that we had because we had always talked about this scenario in which Nikita was put in a bubble in which she believes she had won. If Mr. Jones had his way, she would have lived out her entire life in that bubble and never known that the group was still operating.”

That would have been dark. Deception to the end.

Speaking of this interview (which TV Guide ran at 10pm just after Nikita finished) it is a very good one, discussing the decision to kill off Ryan, not use Nikita or Michael doubles, Michael’s last name, Amanda’s final resolution, favorite episodes, etc.